Wait - is this for real? A large American company openly defying the anti-freedom and totalitarian content industry? In comments in the UK media, Google chairman Eric Schmidt took aim at the big content-sponsored PROTECT IP act. The PROTECT IP act is the US internet censorship (the China kind) law, which more or less takes aim directly against Google. In his criticism, Schmidt went far - very far. The content industry obviously isn't pleased.

So it's not really that surprising that Google would oppose it then. "

I don't think Apple or Microsoft will stand up for free speech like this.

And hardly surprising that Apple wouldn't. Microsoft maybe have something to stand up for. Actually the article was doing very well until that last sentence. Why did there have to be a dig at Apple and / or Microsoft thrown in, especially when it doesn't really impact one of them?

Are they mentioned just to get those names into the article for the crawlers?

Although it's not really apple who wants the DRM, it's the music and film labels that demand it. Apple has to deal with the devil to deliver the content. Jobs has said multiple times if he had his way he would take the drm out and charge 20/30p a track. It was apple as well as the users that helped drive the current drm less music on iTunes. Any other company would have just left the drm on and not worry about it.

I do agree with the article, it's a short sighted view by the labels that is only to help speed up their demise, they will need to learn and adapt better and offer media a more fair prices both to the artists and to the consumer.

I'd say because they are big supporters of DRM and therefore are also against free speech in a sense.

That's not entirely true. Apple and Microsoft have contractual obligations with media companies to protect distributed songs, movies, etc with DRM. They wouldn't have been able to sign those agreements without it.

Why? You'll find a lot of people agreeing with that assumption. It's no magic, a simple thought based on long time experience. It's no more invalid than saying they will oppose, but it has more history to back it up. It's to Apple and MS to prove it wrong by actually taking the right side for once.

If this also affects Google's search engine it probably affects Bing too. So at least Microsoft is affected, and it'd be awesome to see them say "we'll also fight it".

It's not an "if", it's simply not possible for Microsoft to avoid this either. Any and all US-based search engines must comply with the law and thus filter the results. This means Bing, Google, Amazon, and so on.

Having to police the search results and filter them is indeed a form of censorship, I agree with them, but there's more reasons to fight this act than just that: having to police humongous amounts of websites and search results will just create lots of extra work for these companies while the benefit is.. well, negligible; the censored sites will just change names and domains and be back, and the round starts again from the beginning. It's an endless game of cat-and-mouse that search engine providers simply cannot win.

There is after all an easier way around it: host search sites outside the U.S. The net will simply route around the "broken part". If they continue making such foolish laws it will eventually convince enough people that the U.S. and companies bound by U.S. law can not be trusted to handle any Internet infrastructure (DNS, search, etc). After all Google fought this battle in China already by redirecting to the Hong Kong site. They could do the same with the U.S.

We lost the power when the corporations started funneling money into the pockets of politicians which started passing more laws to make more money for the corporations which started funneling more money into politicians pockets which started passing more laws to make more money for the corporations which started funneling more money into the politicians pockets...

There's no full stop, it's a viscous cycle that will keep repeating itself until we fall to our knees or we replace these self serving sons of ******* with someone who actually gives a shit about the country and its people instead of a bunch special interest thugs who can pad their pockets more.

And to answer your question, there's no excuses and no justification. To me, it's a clear matter of right and wrong and these people passing laws and calling shots keep doing it wrong.

I disagree in one important way. The primary issue isn't that the politicians don't care. The problem is if you give a group of people (Congress) unlimited control over everything imaginable and every aspect over everyone else's lives, down to how much salt they are allowed to eat and where their kids and go to school, you will not get a good result no matter how much the lawmakers "care."

They simply have too much control. Areas of private life and private business that had been "off limits" to government control for hundreds of years are now routine political decisions. As long as those politicians are controlling everything, businesses will always have a compelling reason to make sure the law comes out written in their favor.

In about 99.999% of cases nowadays it would be far better for the government to say, "I'm staying out of that -- that is none of my business," and not even pass a law. Does anyone need this law? Really? Each new law, especially the laws passed in the US over the past 12y or so, makes everything just one more step worse. Just stop already!

We lost the power when the corporations started funneling money into the pockets of politicians which started passing more laws to make more money for the corporations which started funneling more money into politicians pockets which started passing more laws to make more money for the corporations which started funneling more money into the politicians pockets...

Yes it's called corporatism. Sometimes it starts as politicians essentially blackmailing corporations for their campaign money, lest they be regulated out of existence or a mafia hit with anti-trust laws. So what I'm saying is it's not always the corporations that initiate the cycle you described so well.

Google is against anything that would force them to police the internet, and always has been. They've gone along with the laws in China because they have to, and don't want to see the same situation play out in the US.

I don't think Apple or Microsoft will stand up for free speech like this.

The CCIA trade group has backed up what Google is saying, and Microsoft is a member. Along with Yahoo, Google, and several other big tech companies. It's really only the content industries that are behind this, other companies are generally either against or indifferent.

Large companies do what they think is best to make (as much) profit (as possible). Most of the time you don't have to search for another reason when Google, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and others make decisions.

If you only look at the number of ads on those sites.. that already is enough reason for Google.

I hope Google gives the content industry a proper bloody nose over this. People need to learn to be careful of who they piss off. What if Google were to suddenly stifle all search results on the RIAA's top selling artists, or the MPAA's top rating movies? Suspend the official record company and artist Youtube accounts? It's remarkable how short sighted people can be when they think they're better than everyone else. I work in a phone shop, and you'd think people would be careful of pissing me off since I can find their home address in five seconds. My motto: always be courteous, you never know who knows a great recipe for napalm and has access to a cellular carrier's entire customer database.... ... ... Wink.

What if Google were to suddenly stifle all search results on the RIAA's top selling artists, or the MPAA's top rating movies? Suspend the official record company and artist Youtube accounts?

Ahem…

People need to learn to be careful of who they piss off.

I doubt the public would be too happy if their favourite bands and movies started disappearing off search results. I think Facebook and Bing would be all too happy to pick up the slack. Also, don't underestimate the lobbying power of these halcyon entities; they've got lot of money and a lot of friends and actions like that would be pounced upon with every anti-trust accusation they can dream of.

There are countless eyes watching for anti-competitive, monopolistic behaviour in Google, and behaviour like the above would smack and quickly draw a "please explain" from many interested parties.

P.S. Boasting about your lax attitude towards customer's private data and your ability to create incendiary weapons is not very professional and is downright idiotic.

Downloading or getting copies of copyrighted content set to be sold ... we don't pay is thief... I respect that. My music is paid ( I have almost the whole collection of Mike Oldfield dicography, and then Genesis etc.. to say that even if their music is 15-30 years old. ) as long as the industry holds the copyrights, they are master of their proprietary contents.

But when The government is using the population freedom and money to protect the industry, that government becomes a dictator. Anyway we know all who/what is really holding the power: $$$

We were really glad to hear Schmidt's comments here at the office. We've been working on COICA since it was introduced last year, and we're deeply opposed to PROTECT IP. These laws are all introduced with heavy industry lobbying and very little in the way of verifiable, independent datasets describing the economic damage. In fact just earlier this week a report came out of the UK showing how devoid of substantiated facts most of the lobby groups', like RIAA and MPAA, reasoning is.

The comments made by Schmidt are against enacting censorship laws in the form of dns control. He is not approving of piracy.

There's nothing inherently special about a domain registration. It's like a license to do business. And when companies violate the law, they lose their license to do business. Ergo, a website that consistently violates international law loses its domain registration in dns.

Google doesn't like this because, frankly, they see business benefits (e.g. driving more search, more more advertising, more profits) to indexing pirated content. THUS, I wouldn't take Google's opinion on search because they have an obvious conflict of interests here.

If the MPAA guy can't make money in the movie business, then quit making movies and get a real job.

Um, I think that the average person would agree that making movies is a "real job". I'm not a big fan of many of the crappy movies that come out of Hollywood and elsewhere; but, at the same time, if they're going to invest $$$ in generating content, they deserve to profit from that content; ergo, international copyright law needs to be enforced.

"He should get a real job" of course sounds a bit harsh. I ment a job that pays money instead of a hobby. Obviously Hollywood isn't making any money on their movies anymore or they wouldn't be crying to the govt to get involved.

Good article, but I take issue with this. Most people agree with some level of censorship. In the UK we have censorship laws that prohibit incitement to violence, religious hatred, indecent pseudo-photographs, violent films for children, and discussing the private lives of rich bankers (amongst many others). This is all censorship, but many people consider the question of whether it's right or wrong to be one of boundaries.

In this case I think the question is whether censorship is a justified means of preventing other laws from being broken (e.g. violence, or in this case copyright infringement). If the argument against is simply "censorship is always wrong" then I think the argument will be lost: most people don't believe this, I'm afraid.

The american people have long ago given away their civil liberties and freedom. And I'm not talking only about this "PROTECT IP act", they gave away much more important liberties and rights. What we see today are the consequences.

One side of Google talks this good game about opposing to censorship practice the MPAA wants to impose, but another face is already blocking rooted Android users from movie rentals to appease the MPAA.

In my country, our independence movement started as a tax revolt led by a cabal of wealthy, freeloading merchants. In part to make sure that no one would tax them so much again, they later guaranteed a lot of freedoms and imposed several inefficient restrictions on the government. (I also hear that a few other countries were pretty inspired.)

It's about protecting intellectual property, right? does it say somewhere that people cannot post their opinion online, as well as their works, if they want?

Come on Thom. Please. Stop writing sensational articles just to gather hits. I joined OS News because at one time, I found it an invaluable source of information about operating systems and technologies. I don't disagree with posting news concerning technology-related laws, but you are getting too far with your opinion that IP protection equals censorship. It's just illogical to think so.